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Heated debate with myself: should I rebuild a shutter or replace the whole lens?
Got a customer's vintage Pentax Spotmatic in last week with a sticky shutter. I had to pick between rebuilding just the shutter blades or swapping in a whole replacement lens unit from a donor body. I went with the rebuild because I wanted to save the original glass, but it took me 4 hours of fiddling with tiny screws and the timing is still off by half a stop. Anyone else wrestle with this choice and regret not just swapping the whole assembly?
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wendy13116d ago
Hang on, half a stop off on a vintage Spotmatic? That's basically within spec for a camera that old, isn't it? People act like a shutter timing being a little loose is the end of the world, but it's just a mechanical camera, not a spaceship. You saved the original glass and it still works, so I say you won that gamble. Most people won't see that half stop, and if they do, they're probably pixel peeping on a 60 year old lens anyway. Seems like a lot of worry over nothing to me.
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ellis.faith16d ago
Oh man, half a stop is basically "as God intended" for a Spotmatic... I've taken photos that were off by a full stop and just called it "creative exposure"!
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